SHENSTONE, WILLIAM (1714-1763), English poet, son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne, daughter of William Penn of Harborough Hall, Hagley, was born at the Leasowes, a property in the parish of Halesowen, now in Worcestershire, but then included in the county of Shropshire. At school he began a life long friendship with Richard Jago, and at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1732, he made another firm friend in Richard Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote. In 1742 he published anonymously a revised form of The School mistress, a Poem in imitation of Spenser. . . . The original was Sarah Lloyd, teacher of the village school where Shenstone received his first education. He inherited the Leasowes estate, and retired there in 1745 to undertake what proved the chief work of his life, the beautifying of his property. He embarked on elaborate schemes of landscape gardening which gave the Leasowes a wide celebrity, but sadly impoverished the owner.
He corresponded with many of the literary people of the day, especially with Jago, Dodsley, Lady Luxborough and Bishop Percy. The correspondence with Percy shows that Shenstone first suggested the collection of the Reliques. Shenstone died on Feb. I1, 1763.
His works were first published by his friend Robert Dodsley (3 vols., 1764-1769). The second volume contains Dodsley's description of the Leasowes. The last, consisting of correspondence with Graves, Jago and others, appeared after Dodsley's death. Other letters of Shenstone's are included in Select Letters (ed. Thomas Hill 1778). Samuel Johnson wrote the Life prefixed to his works in Chalmers's British Poets. See also Richard Graves, Recollections of some par ticulars in the Life of the Late William Shenstone (1788) ; H. Sydney Grazebrook, The Family of Shenstone the Poet (189o).